From data and information to knowledge: the Web of tomorrow

Event details

Dr Serge Abiteboul is based at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) in France.

Relational database management systems serve as mediators between individuals and machines. Web search engines brought information management to levels previously unconceivable, and then, after the Internet and networks of machines, came the networks of Internet users. Social networks enable users to communicate, publish, and interact with others leading to new modes of thinking, and new kinds of relations. One current challenge is the development of technologies that will make it possible to find, evaluate, validate, verify and rank information, and thus build tomorrow’s “Web of knowledge”. By considering evolutions of the Web, we will try to imagine a world with billions of computer systems connected, collectively reasoning to help Internet users survive in an ocean of data and information.

Serge Abiteboul obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, and a Doctoral Thesis from the University of Paris-Sud. He became a researcher at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique in 1982. He was a Lecturer at the École Polytechnique and Visiting Professor at Stanford and Oxford University. He has been Chaire Professor at Collège de France in 2011-12 and Francqui Chair Professor at Namur University in 2012-2013. He co-founded the company Xyleme in 2000.

Serge Abiteboul has received the ACM SIGMOD Innovation Award in 1998 and the EADS Award from the French Academy of sciences in 2007. He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2008, and a member the Academy of Europe in 2011. He is currently PI of the Webdam ERC (2008-2013) and a member of the LSV at the École Normale Supérieure, Cachan. His research work focuses mainly on data, information and knowledge management, particularly on the Web. He is a member of the Conseil national du numérique and Chairman of the Scientific board of the Société d'Informatique de France.